Tracking militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy

Cruz, Ted

last updated: April 20, 2017

2016 Republican President Candidate

U.S. Senate (R-TX)

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Sen. Ted Cruz is a “Tea Party” Republican from Texas who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. An unsuccessful 2016 GOP presidential primary candidate, Cruz is best known for his conservative domestic platform promoting “limited” government. Cruz has also expressed strong sympathies for projecting U.S. military power abroad.

An aggressive proponent of rightist political and social principles and the son of a Cuban emigrant, Cruz’s election campaigns have received support from Tea Party-aligned groups like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, as well as from major “pro-Israel” donors like Sheldon Adelson, who reportedly gave some $250,000 to a group backing Cruz’s 2012 Senate campaign.[1] During the 2016 election cycle, Cruz was a major recipient of donations from NORPAC, an AIPAC-aligned political action committee. According to one report, NORPAC “led efforts to kill the [Iran] nuclear accord,” which Cruz has vehemently opposed and promised to rescind.[2]

Although Cruz has described his foreign policy approach as between “the isolationism of Rand Paul” and the “neoconservatism of John McCain,” when asked by Bloomberg View which foreign policy experts he trusts, he listed three overt militarists: former George W. Bush U.N. ambassador John Bolton, Iran-Contra veteran Elliott Abrams, and former CIA director James Woolsey.[3]

An erstwhile fervent critic of Donald Trump, Cruz has expressed admiration for some of Trump’s comments and actions since winning the 2016 election. In one case, Cruz backed the real estate magnate after he took a phone call from the president of Taiwan in December 2016, a highly controversial move that threatened relations with China. Cruz tweeted: “I would much rather have Donald Trump talking to President Tsai than to Cuba’s Raul Castro or Iran’s Hasan Rouhani. This is an improvement.”

Cruz has also backed Trump’s approach on Iran, in particular with respect to the Obama-negotiated multilateral agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. During the 2016 campaign, Cruz advocated “ripping the deal to shreds.” However, Cruz has more recently backed Trump’s stated intention to “renegotiate” the deal. At the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, Cruz said, “What he has said he intends to do is vigorously enforce the deal and renegotiate it so that it better protects our interests. If that’s the path he has chosen, I encourage him to do exactly that.”

In December 2015, the Intercept revealed that a small Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, Beacon Global Strategies, was providing foreign policy advice to numerous GOP candidates including Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and others. The firm was “founded in 2013 by former senior officials from the State Department, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency.” Beacon’s advisory board included Eric Edelman, a former Bush administration official who served as an adviser to Rubio’s presidential campaign; and Brian Hook, who helped lead the hawkish John Hay Initiative.[4]

In an April 2015 speech, Cruz outlined his foreign policy vision and stated it was neither “full neocon” nor “libertarian isolationist.” He listed “three preconditions” for U.S. military intervention overseas: “First, it should begin with a clearly stated objective at the outset. It should be directly tied to U.S. national security. Second, we should use overwhelming force to that objective. We should not have rules of engagement that tie the hands of our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines. Third, we should get the heck out. It is not the job of the U.S. military to engage in nation building to turn foreign countries into democratic utopias.”[5]

After Trump won the GOP primary, Cruz initially refused to back him. He eventually endorsed the real estate magnate, to the dismay of allies and former colleagues, one of whom complained in a Washington Post op-ed that seeing her former boss and other GOP leaders back Trump was like “watching political body snatchers take over the party, replacing previously respectable men with dead-eyed zombies.”

Split with Neoconservatives

In December 2015, Cruz delivered an address at the conservative Heritage Foundation in which he said: “[W]e cannot treat democracy promotion as an absolute directive; but rather as a highly-desirable ideal—one that can be reached most effectively through the promotion of the security and the interests of the United States.”[6]

He also argued against the NSA’s bulk-collection of the phone data of Americans in the speech, opining: “Hoarding tens of billions of records of ordinary citizens didn’t stop Fort Hood, it didn’t stop Boston, it didn’t stop Garland, and it failed to detect the San Bernardino plot.”[7]

A month earlier, during a November 2015 interview with Bloomberg, Cruz said that the United States should not overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, arguing: “The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. If the Obama administration and the Washington neo-cons succeed in toppling [Bashar al-] Assad, Syria will be handed over to radical Islamic terrorists. ISIS will rule Syria.” He also attacked Marco Rubio for supporting “Hillary Clinton in toppling [Muammar] Qaddafi in Libya,” which he said “made no sense.”[8]

In the same interview, Cruz reprimanded “these crazy neo-con invade-every-country-on-earth and send our kids to die in the Middle East.” He added: “If you look at President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and for that matter some of the more aggressive Washington neo-cons, they have consistently mis-perceived the threat of radical Islamic terrorism and have advocated military adventurism that has had the effect of benefiting radical Islamic terrorists.”[9]

These comments have drawn the ire of hardline pundits and neoconservative activists. The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens said that Cruz should notice that his “anti-interventionist instincts precisely track those of Mr. Obama, who was reluctantly dragged into a war he led from behind.”[10]Lee Smith of the neoconservative Hudson Institute said that Cruz’s “ship of state would tack erratically in foreign waters between the policy of the current White House and incoherence.”[11]

Analysts have described Cruz’s foreign policy positions as “a tricky balancing act, at once more and less militaristic than his rivals.”[12] Others have highlighted that “Cruz’s foreign policy in some ways is unapologetically aggressive,” stressing that Cruz “has vowed, like some of the others in the GOP field, including Rubio, to tear up the Iran nuclear deal on his first day in office and to ‘carpet-bomb’ the Islamic State.”[13]

Iran, Syria, North Korea

Cruz has repeatedly expressed support for confrontational U.S. foreign policies that could lead the United States into military conflict. On Iran, for instance, Cruz has co-sponsored sanctions that were intended to damage the prospects for a negotiated settlement on that country’s nuclear program. In early 2014, Cruz lambasted President Obama shortly after his state of the union address for insisting that he would veto any additional sanctions on Iran while the negotiations were ongoing. Cruz argued that the veto threat “was perhaps the most dangerous line” in the president’s address. Playing the fear card, Cruz added: “If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the risk is unacceptable that that weapon will be detonated over the skies of Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles. And the result could be hundreds of thousands of lives lost.”[14]

At a September 2014 event, Cruz reiterated his opposition to the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Iran and suggested Iran should meet certain preconditions before the United States continue negotiations. “Right now this week, the government of Iran is sitting down with the United States government swilling chardonnay in New York City, to discuss what Prime Minister Netanyahu has rightly described as a ‘historic mistake,’ a very very bad deal that tragically is setting the stage for Iran to acquire nuclear weapon capability,” Cruz said at the Values Voter Summit.[15]

“We so desperately need a president who will stand up and say ‘these discussions will not even begin until you release Pastor Saeed and send him home,’” Cruz added, referencing Iranian American pastor Saeed Abedini, who has been imprisoned in Iran since 2012.[16]

In March 2015, Cruz was among the 47 Republican Senators who signed a controversial letter to Iran crafted by hawkish Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). The letter, which argued that the United States would not abide by any nuclear deal reached between Iran and the P5+1 past the Obama administration, was widely condemned as an effort aimed at undermining the executive branch’s ability to conduct foreign policy. Despite this, Cruz stood by his signature, telling MSNBC he would sign it again in “large print, so that the ayatollah wouldn’t need his reading glasses to read the signature.” He added: “It was intended to stop a bad deal. Absolutely.”[17]

Cruz described Iran nuclear negotiations as “reminiscent of Munich in 1938”[18] and contended that “those who are leading this negotiation fundamentally don’t understand who it is they are negotiating with.”[19] He wildly claimed that the P5+1 (the five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) think that it is “perfectly acceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and they will be part of the rational community of nations.”[20]

Cruz railed against the July 2015 comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations, wildly declaring it to be “catastrophic for the American people” and proclaiming that it made the “Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.”[21] His comments received criticism from across party lines, including from former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said Cruz went “way over the line.”[22]

At a September 2015 anti-Iran deal rally on Capitol Hill, Cruz appeared alongside figures like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin to denounce the agreement. He declared at the gathering: “If this deal goes through, we know to an absolute certainty people will die. Americans will die, Israelis will die, Europeans will die.”[23] He added: “If Iran will not stop its nuclear program, we will stop it for you.”[24]

Cruz then misleadingly stated before the largely “Tea Party” crowd: “Have any of y’all seen the movie ‘Scarface? This is the equivalent of law enforcement picking up the phone and calling Tony Montana and saying, ‘Hey Tony, you got any drugs?’ ‘I don’t got no drugs.’ ‘Thank you, Tony.’ That is essentially the Iranian nuclear inspection regime.”[25]

According to Cruz, the Iran deal would “facilitate and accelerate the nation of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.” Politifact.com said of his claim: “The Iran deal may be less than perfect, but experts say it’s hard to see how implementing the agreement—rather than doing nothing at all—would actually ‘facilitate and accelerate’ an Iranian nuclear weapon. … We rate the claim False.”[26]

Cruz has also argued that Iran is a greater threat to the United States than ISIS and that the terrorist group should be used against Iran. “As serious a threat as ISIS presents, the threat from Iran is qualitatively greater. And the Obama administration has it backwards, they are trying to use ISIS to weaken our stance against Iran,” he told Bloomberg View in late 2014. “The growing potency of ISIS should be used to put even greater pressure on Iran.”[27]

Previously, in a 2012 campaign statement, Cruz wrote that “Iran and North Korea present perhaps the greatest danger in the modern world, specifically nuclear weapons (and the threat of nuclear weapons) in the hands of two of the world’s most murderous regimes. We must pursue all means necessary to contain that threat. International sanctions should continue to pressure the Iranian and North Korean elites to decide it’s in their best interests to abandon nuclear weapons—and, ideally, overthrow their current regimes. In the meantime, Iran and North Korea must understand they face a threat of overwhelming force if we see any evidence that they might pass nuclear weapons on to terrorists or threaten us with nuclear blackmail.”[28]

Declaring that Cruz was mostly “reading from the interventionist script,” Daniel Larison observed: “It isn’t clear how Cruz reconciles his goal of U.S.-sponsored regime change in both countries with an effort to persuade these regimes that they should not have a nuclear deterrent. … If Cruz is going to promote the cause of limited government, it appears that this will not extend to the government’s activities overseas.”[29]

On the other hand, in 2013 when the Obama administration was considering a military intervention in Syria’s civil war, Cruz cautioned against using the U.S. military as “a policeman for the world,” adding, “the only justifiable reason for U.S. military forces to be engaged is to protect our national security.”[30] However, Cruz said he would support a plan to “to go in, locate the [chemical] weapons, secure or destroy them, and get out,”[31] but only if the president sought the approval of Congress. Playing down the significance of international treaties banning the use of chemical weapons, Cruz added, “Abstract notions about international norms [against chemical weapons] should never displace U.S. sovereignty to act, or refuse to act, for our national security.”[32]

“Pro-Israel”

Cruz has also consistently supported a hardline “pro-Israel” foreign policy. Shortly after taking office in January 2013, Cruz visited Afghanistan and Israel as part of a Senate Republican delegation. Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who called Cruz “a friend of Israel”—Cruz declared, “In my view the United States should stand unshakably alongside the Nation of Israel.”[33] Since then, Cruz has cosponsored Iran sanctions in the Senate that have been heavily supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as well as other leading members of the “Israel lobby.”

In November 2014, Cruz attended a gathering of prominent Jewish American donors in New York City in an apparent attempt to court their support for a potential presidential run. Hosted by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the event brought together many several longstanding “pro-Israel” hawks, including Alan Dershowitz, Christians United for Israel chairman John Hagee, Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN), and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, among many others. “This administration has been the most antagonistic toward Israel in memory,” Cruz proclaimed to his hosts. “Standing for Israel is a deep passion of mine. But it’s also a manifestation of a basic principle that if I say I’m with you I’m really with you.”[34]

At the ZOA dinner, Cruz said: “A real president … would stand up and say on the world stage: Under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will either stop, or we will stop them.”[35]

The gathering received widespread attention for comments made by Sheldon Adelson after a private two-hour meeting he had with Cruz. According to the New York Observer, Adelson thought Cruz was “too right wing” and “a longshot to win the nomination.” According to the Observer, Adelson called the newspaper after publication of the story “to dispute that characterization of his reaction to Mr. Cruz. Mr. Adelson made clear to the Observer that he was the only person in the room with Mr. Cruz and thus the only one in a position to know how he felt about the Senator.”[36]

Cruz was also an vocal supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial March 2015 speech to Congress criticizing the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s heroic—even Churchillian—opposition to a nuclear Iran has done such tremendous service to U.S. national security,” he said in March 2015.[37]

A New McCarthy?

Cruz has been heavily criticized for mischaracterizing of his opponents’ views and often making outlandish accusations. In January 2014, for instance, Cruz accused the U.S. government of “targeting” the conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza, who was arrested that month for allegedly laundering money in violation of campaign finance laws. During a segment of an interview with CBS Face the Nation that was cut from the broadcast version of the interview, Cruz wildly claimed that the Obama administration was persecuting filmmakers: “Let me tell you something that is deeply concerning—the abuse of power from this Administration. We’ve seen multiple filmmakers prosecuted and the government’s gone after them. … Just this week it was broken that Dinesh D’Souza, who did a very big movie criticizing the president, is now being prosecuted by this administration.”[38]

In February 2013, the New Yorker reported that at an Americans for Prosperity event in 2010, Cruz claimed that the faculty of Harvard Law School, which he attended from 1992 to 1995, contained at least 12 members “who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”[39] Cruz was apparently referring to a group of Marxist-inspired professors who advocate “Critical Legal Studies,” or the notion that “law ends up reflecting the will and the interests of the powerful,” according to Think Progress’ Zack Beauchamp.[40]

Cruz’s assessment was dismissed by Charles Fried, a Republican law professor who taught Cruz at Harvard. Fried complained that Cruz’s remark “lacks nuance” and “misunderstands what [the CLS professors] were about.”[41] Nonetheless, a spokesperson for Cruz doubled down on his assertion, calling the “substantive point” about Marxists in the faculty “absolutely correct.”[42]

Several commentators likened Cruz’s charges to McCarthyism, with some suggesting that Cruz’s inflammatory rhetoric could hurt the GOP’s efforts to rebrand itself after its poor showing in the 2012 elections. “Cruz is now positioned as a major obstacle to the ideological modernization that the Republican Party is desperately in need of,” wrote Salon‘s Steve Kornacki. “If his brand of conservatism is treated as the gold standard of purity by the conservative media and conservative activists, Republican leaders will have a hard time moving the party away from its Obama-era orthodoxy.”[43]

Cruz attracted similar attention for his questioning of Chuck Hagel during the future Defense Secretary’s confirmation hearings in early 2013. Highlighting a 2009 appearance Hagel had made on an Al Jazeera English call-in show, Cruz attempted to link Hagel to remarks made by one of the show’s callers referring to the United States as “the world’s bully.” Hagel, Cruz alleged, had appeared on “a foreign network broadcasting propaganda to nations that are hostile to us” and “explicitly agree[d] with the characterization of the United States as the world’s bully. I would suggest is not the conduct one would expect of a secretary of defense.”[44]

Cruz also insinuated that Hagel had publicly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and “sickening slaughter” in Lebanon, highlighting clips that observers said were taken out of context. “Judged kindly,” wrote blogger Zack Beauchamp, “Cruz’s performance in each of these two hearings was aggressively inaccurate. Judged more harshly (and accurately), it was mendacious demagoguery at its finest. … [I]f you want to know why the Republican Party will remain broken for the foreseeable future, go watch the Ted Cruz game tape from this week.”[45]

Subsequently, Cruz successfully pressured the Senate Armed Services Committee to delay a vote on advancing Hagel’s nomination by circulating a letter, signed by 25 Senate Republicans, demanding further information from Hagel before they would allow a vote. The Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib reported that “the Republicans’ requests go far beyond the scope of Hagel’s personal finances and records, varying between asking him for materials that don’t exist or that would violate legal agreements to release.” Gharib quoted congressional procedures expert Norm Ornstein, a political scientist based at the American Enterprise Institute, who complained that “this goes even beyond the intrusive questionnaires candidates fill out during the vetting process. … That a Freshman senator would ask for that level of information says more about Ted Cruz than about anything else. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”[46]

The Senate eventually voted to confirm Hagel, but not before Cruz had also insinuated that the nominee may have taken money from Saudi Arabia or North Korea, a remark for which the senator was widely ridiculed.[47]

Background and Trajectory

Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father and an American mother. His father, Rafael Cruz, is an evangelical pastor who has a penchant for making outlandish public statements, once telling an audience that the United States is “a Christian nation” and should “send Barack Obama back to Chicago, back to Kenya.”[48]

A 2012 Mother Jones profile of Cruz described the senator’s views as “an amalgam of far-right dogmas,” including “a Paulian distaste for international law; a Huckabee-esque strain of Christian conservatism; and a [Rick] Perry-like reverence for the 10th Amendment, which he believes grants the states all powers not explicitly outlined in the Constitution while severely curtailing the federal government’s authority to infringe on them. Toss in a dose of [fictional Republican sitcom character] Alex P. Keaton and a dash of Cold War nostalgia, and you’ve got a tea party torch carrier the establishment can embrace.”[49]

Before joining the Senate, Cruz served as solicitor general for the state of Texas, during which time he argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. “Of Cruz’s eight oral arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of Texas,” Mother Jones reported, “five involved the death penalty, with Cruz arguing, at various points, that Texas should be allowed to execute the mentally ill, a Mexican national who hadn’t been informed of his Vienna Convention right to speak to his consulate, and a man who raped his stepdaughter.”[50] In one case, Medellin vs. Texas, Cruz successfully fought an attempt by the International Court of Justice to reopen the cases of 51 convicts on the U.S. death row, which Cruz touted on his website as a defense of “U.S. sovereignty against the UN and the World Court.”[51]

Cruz has also boasted of defending the inclusion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance recited by schoolchildren and preserving a Ten Commandments display on public property.[52]

Cruz’s resumes includes serving as a clerk for former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist, a domestic policy adviser to the 2000 George W. Bush campaign, an associate deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft, and as a director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission.

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